There are a lot of ironies in the Wisconsin
fight between the Republican-dominated legislature and the working class.

On Tuesday, Feb. 22, the State Senate
unanimously passed a resolution to honor the Green Bay Packers for winning the
Super Bowl. Every one of the players is a member of a union.

Of course, only the 19 Republicans in
the chamber voted for the resolution; the 14 Democratic senators, co-sponsors
of the resolution, were in Illinois. They were in the neighboring state because
newly-elected Gov. Scott Walker, supported by Big Business, the Tea Party, and
far-right conservatives, had ordered the unionized state police to bring every
Democratic senator into the capitol in order to assure a quorum. Needing one
more member, the Senate couldn't pass any fiscal legislation.

Walker and
the legislature thought they could ram through a union-busting measure, disguising
it under a cloak of balancing the state budget. All they needed were 20
senators--19 Republicans and, for that elusive quorum, one Democrat, even if he
or she voted against the bill. The only reason the state had a deficit, they lied,
was because of union wages and benefits.

The unions had already said they would
accept what amounts to an 8 percent cut. But, Walker, acting more like a
caricature of a Fat Cat Boss, refused to negotiate. His demands, if put into
law, would essentially "gut" public worker unions.

For two weeks, beginning Feb. 14,
thousands of government workers and their supporters came to Madison to defend
unions and collective bargaining. At its peak, more than 70,000 were in the
streets of the state's larger cities. One of those protestors was all-pro
cornerback Charles Woodson, the Packers' co-captain, one of those honored by
the Legislature. Woodson, strong in his condemnation of the governor and
Legislature, said he was honored "to stand together with working families
of Wisconsin and organized labor [who were] under an unprecedented attack to
take away their basic rights to have a voice and collectively bargain at
work."

There are more ironies.

Thousands of anti-union voices have
cried out that they don't need unions. However, even the most
rabid anti-union reactionary has benefitted from labor's push for a 40 hour
work week, overtime, better working conditions, the enactment of rigorous child
labor laws, and basic benefits, including vacation time and sick leave.

Unions also led the push to create the
National Labor Relations Board, which gives further worker protections, while
restricting excesses, both by unions and employers; and the Davis--Bacon Act,
which requires all private contractors on federal projects to pay wages
equivalent to what union workers would earn, even if their own companies are
not unionized. The "prevailing doctrine" has led to better wages and
employee training in the construction industry, according to labor historian Rosemary
Brasch.

Unions were
primarily responsible for creating the rise of the middle class, thus elevating
the poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised. With weaker unions, says economist
Richard Freeman, "the U.S. will be slower in developing policies to help
the disadvantaged and poor . . . and to protect consumers, workers, and
shareholders from business crime and dishonesty." All social programs,
according to writer/activist Harvey Wasserman "can trace their roots to
union activism, as can the protection of our civil liberties." Strong
labor unions generally have higher productivity, according to independent
research done by Harley Shalen of the University of California, because there
is "less turnover, better worker communication, better working conditions,
and a better-educated workforce." Further,
merely the threat of unionization at a company usually leads to improved work
conditions as employers, using extraordinary means to impose anti-union bias
into their companies, nevertheless, will improve the lives of their workers solely
to avoid collective bargaining and union benefits.

Anti-union rhetoric also leads people
to believe that the generous health benefits that governments give to unionized
workers has led to the current financial problems, all of which are absorbed by
the taxpayers. But, the truth reveals another irony. Better health
benefits actually result in lower costs to the taxpayers. Most of the 50 million
uninsured are members of working families, and have lower incomes, making them
eligible for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), funded
by taxpayers. Unable to pay even the co-insurance costs, low-income workers
usually use medical facilities only when there are critical problems, thus
jeopardizing their own health, and resulting in less productivity and more long
term care, all paid by public programs. Uninsured patients also pay more for
health care, and are more likely to stay impoverished because of health costs,
according to recent studies by the Kaiser Foundation on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Medicaid payments in 2008 were about $204 billion.

And in the ultimate irony, Rush
Limbaugh, who called union workers "bottom-feeding freeloaders,"
Glenn Beck, who miraculously linked trade unionism with Communists, socialists,
the Muslim Brotherhood, and the United Nations, and numerous other conservative
commentators are all members of the American Federation of Television and Radio
Artists (AFTRA), an AFL-CIO union.

[Next Week: Lies and the truth in Wisconsin.
Walter Brasch, an award-winning journalist, is author of 16 books,
including With Just Cause: Unionization
of the American Journalist. He has been a member of several unions,
including The Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America, International
Association of Machinists, the United Auto Workers, the Association of State
College and University Faculty, and three in the entertainment industry. You
may contact Dr. Brasch at walterbrasch@gmail.com]

www.walterbrasch.com

Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist and professor of journalism emeritus. His current books are Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution , America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional (more...)